All posts tagged Business

Penny Pritzker, President Barack Obama‘s nominee to head the Commerce Department, told a Senate committee Thursday that one reason Mr. Obama picked her is that he believed she could improve his relationship with businesses.

During Ms. Pritzker’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee, Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.) pointed out that some critics have accused the president of being “antibusiness.” Ms. Pritzker, a Chicago businesswoman who founded five companies and is chief executive of a real-estate investment firm, said she and the president discussed his relationship with businesses when he asked her to join his cabinet.

“We discussed very clearly his desire that I serve … as a bridge between the administration and the business community,” Ms. Pritzker said. She added that President Obama “felt the relationship would be improved” if she served as secretary of commerce… Read More »

President Barack Obama on Thursday plans to announce two executive actions aimed at jump-starting his economic agenda as he works to build support for his ideas to strengthen the middle class.

The president is traveling to Austin, Texas, to kick off what the White House has dubbed the “Middle-Class Jobs and Opportunity Tour,” with stops that will spotlight economic success stories. The message will be that Washington is standing in the way of economic growth, administration officials have said. The goal is to pressure Congress to pass proposals that the president laid out on his State of the Union address, among them new spending for infrastructure and early childhood education, as well as a raise in the minimum wage.

In Austin, Mr. Obama will lay out two new executive actions that the White House said would strengthen the economy. Read More »

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew held a second round of meetings Friday with New York-based corporate executives –this time a roundtable with the Partnership for New York City, a business group focused on improving the city’s economy.

Topics of conversation included the U.S. economy, Europe, housing finance reform, tax reform and cybersecurity, according to a person attending the roundtable.

Three of Washington’s largest business organizations have come together for the first time to ask their members to oppose new efforts by labor unions and liberal groups to require more disclosure of political and lobbying activities by companies.

In a letter to business leaders, the three organizations said efforts to require more disclosure are thinly veiled attempts to “limit or remove altogether the business voice from the policy and policymaking process.”

The letter was signed by Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable, and Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers… Read More »

A group of big retailers, transportation companies and other businesses released a letter to lawmakers on Monday marking the anniversary of what they regard as a dubious achievement: The U.S. corporate tax rate became the developed world’s highest one year ago, after Japan lowered its rate.

The RATE coalition (“Reforming America’s Taxes Equitably”) wants Congress to reduce the corporate tax rate, from the current 35%. The coalition – whose members tend to pay at relatively high effective tax rates, even after deductions – is hoping that lawmakers on the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees will agree to bipartisan legislation to overhaul the tax system and cut the U.S. rate.

“Today, at 35%, the top federal statutory corporate tax rate is 10 percentage points above the OECD average and nearly 15 points higher when state and local taxes are included,” says the letter, referring to the 34-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and signed by 21 CEOs. “The costs to our economy are significant and already being realized. According to a new Ernst & Young study, GDP in 2013 is expected to be between 1.2 and 2.0% lower as a result of our OECD-leading corporate tax rate. Simply put, the U.S. can no longer afford to stand still.” Read More »

Another sign of life in the effort to overhaul the much-maligned U.S. tax code: A new coalition of big-name companies plans to launch on Thursday, pressing for modernization of the rules affecting multinationals.

The formation of the LIFT America Coalition (short for Let’s Invest for Tomorrow) signals that big U.S. multinationals are taking the possibility of a tax rewrite more seriously. The group includes more than a dozen major firms, mostly from high tech, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing. Big names include Caterpillar Inc., Intel Corp., Procter & Gamble Co. and Coca-Cola Co.

Already, big domestic retailers, utilities and defense firms have formed another coalition to push for change, as lawmakers slowly gear up. Read More »

The Chamber of Commerce is taking its immigration pitch beyond the Beltway.

The business group unveiled a new website Wednesday to help build business and grassroots momentum for a comprehensive immigration overhaul. The site is part of a multi-pronged approach the Chamber is taking to sway Congress. They also plan to buy advertisements to support certain immigration initiatives and are holding events across the country centered on small businesses and local chambers of commerce.

“As the process moves forward and draft legislative proposals are introduced, we will continue to activate the Chamber’s federation and millions-strong grassroots network,” said Blair Latoff Holmes, a Chamber spokeswoman… Read More »

But one day last month, lawmakers hoping to rewrite the U.S. business-tax system woke up to a very nice surprise: a huge unexpected pot of money that would be available for the expensive job.

Thank you, Joint Committee on Taxation.

For non-tax nerds, the JCT is the official authority on estimating what a given tax-law change will produce in terms of revenues. This year, the JCT enormously increased its estimate of how much revenue would be generated by tightening the tax rules for U.S. multinationals’ overseas earnings. That in turn could help offset the budget cost of making some of the big changes that many lawmakers and businesses would like, such as lowering tax rates. Read More »

Odds of a fundamental rewrite of the business tax system have plummeted since last year, according to an annual survey of corporate tax executives.

The survey of 163 tax executives by law firm Miller & Chevalier and the National Foreign Trade Council shows that only a few think that a tax overhaul will be enacted in 2013. Last year, 31% of respondents believed Congress would pass a tax revamp in 2013.

This year, more than 40% of respondents predict that fundamental tax reform will not be enacted until after 2015, if ever. Last year, 11% of respondents thought a tax overhaul would not be enacted until after 2015, if ever. Read More »

A Texas political fight is playing out in an unlikely place: California.

On Wednesday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, wrapped up a visit to Silicon Valley and Southern California, where he was trying to woo companies to Texas. The trip followed a radio advertisement in California last week, in which Mr. Perry was featured discussing the business benefits of moving to the Lone Star State.

At the same time, a Democratic political action committee in Texas took aim at Mr. Perry’s California moves with its own ads in the Golden State, declaring that Mr. Perry is selling “snake oil.”… Read More »

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